I can’t stop thinking about Amy and Ashley Cowie. I met Amy on Thursday. I wrote an article about her sister. I know next to nothing about them, yet this sinking feeling keeps gripping me–that perhaps I know them all too well.

To think, to fathom–I can’t, I just can’t. A loss so great that shock would be the only reaction. Could be the only possible response.

It’s like I feel her, Ashley. Not that she’s haunting me but that maybe she just wants to follow me around for a little bit. It doesn’t bother me, but it does make me cry.

So many complex emotions–am I allowed to cry over someone else’s tragedy? Is that not just me being an emotional hypochondriac, adopting another’s pain and calling it my own?

I found myself last night with my back pressed against the brick wall of a frat house, bent over at the waist, crying because I could not stop. Stewart asked “what’s wrong Connelly?” And what I sobbed must be the saddest thing of all “She just didn’t know she was going to die.”

I want to hold Sissy closer than I can and harder than she’d allow. I never want her to not know.